One thing that worries me

There's one thing that really bugs me. I even pointed it out as a bug on redmine.

The thing is that there's some problem with levelling up of some characters, for instance of those paired ones like Khalid and Jaheira. Now to the problem itself: I had Khalid and Jaheira join me at level 1. Jaheira had about 1900/1900 exp, Khalid had less than 100.Next thing I did was to do some ankhneg hunting. And now the thing that makes me sad (in fact, it seems quite gamebreaking): I slayed 2 ankhnegs and that was enough for Jaheira to level up. But it turned out that Khalid gained a new level as well even though his experience was less than 2000 for sure.

And the question to devs is like this: is this problem going to be addressed? Or was it just a one-time bug that occured only to me (I attached my save on redmine in order to try and replicate this)? I've tried a new beta build and this problem still remains.

As I understand it, the bug is that Khalid leveled up from <100 experience after the party killed less than 2000 experience worth of ankhegs. Which should be impossible, even if Khalid was the only character in the party (which is also impossible, of course).

Yep, I meant what @Jarrakul wrote. There's a bug with paired NPC's I think. At least Khalid and Jaheira gained level 2 simultaneously after killing only 2 ankhnegs, which was not normally possible since Khalid had only 40 exp at level one when they joined me character.

J&K's starting XP: we've implemented new functionality that gives NPCs experience comparable to the PC, and lets you level them up from level 1. Khalid starts with 42 xp, and Jaheira has 3572. This does not seem consistent with the intended new behavior, but I'll leave the final interpretation of this to the designers.

K is levelling up with Jaheira, even when he doesn't have the XP: this is definitely a bug, and one we already have an internal ticket for.

Just because something has a bug report, it doesn't mean that it will be implemented. It will be evaluated on its own merits, and we try to err on the side of leaving things as they were in vanilla.

Another pro tip: every "symptom" should get its own ticket, because the cause of each symptom may be very different.

J&K's starting XP: we've implemented new functionality that gives NPCs experience comparable to the PC, and lets you level them up from level 1.

I've noticed this, and I must say, I'm not a fan of this change. It might not seem like a big deal on the surface, but I think this has pretty far-reaching consequences in how companions "feel" to the player.

The way I see it, in Baldur's Gate (especially in BG2) companions are supposed to be fleshed-out characters, as in, real people. You know, adventurers like you, with their own motivations, agendas, emotions, ideas, and so on. But with this change, they feel less real, and more like blank slates. They're waiting for you to find them and carve their stats to your liking. It feels "gamey", in a bad sense. It sacrifices immersion for usability.

I don't want to sound like I'm beating a dead horse (too late, I know), but this is another arbitrary change that seems like it goes a lot farther than whatever thought was put into what its consequences would be. This is precisely the type of change that should be left up to tweak mods.

Complaints are tricky. For every loud voice complaining about something, there's a bunch of silent ones who might disagree and like it the way it is. And, naturally, that's also true for my own regularly scheduled shouting from my handy old soap box (see above).

But you're right, of course. Making gameplay changes like this optional is the way to go, whenever that's a viable solution.

J&K's starting XP: we've implemented new functionality that gives NPCs experience comparable to the PC, and lets you level them up from level 1.

I've noticed this, and I must say, I'm not a fan of this change. It might not seem like a big deal on the surface, but I think this has pretty far-reaching consequences in how companions "feel" to the player.

The way I see it, in Baldur's Gate (especially in BG2) companions are supposed to be fleshed-out characters, as in, real people. You know, adventurers like you, with their own motivations, agendas, emotions, ideas, and so on. But with this change, they feel less real, and more like blank slates. They're waiting for you to find them and carve their stats to your liking. It feels "gamey", in a bad sense. It sacrifices immersion for usability.

I don't want to sound like I'm beating a dead horse (too late, I know), but this is another arbitrary change that seems like it goes a lot farther than whatever thought was put into what its consequences would be. This is precisely the type of change that should be left up to tweak mods.

No, I think you have a good point. Starting all NPCs at level 1 and letting you assign their abilities reeks of min-maxing, which always takes away from the immersion of playing an RPG. Simply put, you don't have to account for weaknesses, because you can artificially minimize them through what could be considered an "out of game" mechanic.

While I understand that a lot of people love playing RPGs like this, there are probably just as many that like going through the game without these kinds of tweaks. There isn't a right or a wrong answer, but I'd love it if they retained the original mechanic.

I admit, I personally have always used BG2 Tweaks to make this new feature happen (well, not exactly, but close enough). Therefor, to me, the new functionality only means I don't have to install that part of the mod.

For those that consider this gamey, are they going to have a mod option to revert this?

I really hope they made an option to revert back to the old behaviour. I want my NPCs to have their "choices" done already so that I adapt to what their skills are instead of min maxing everything.

It's not a bad thing to add to the game, but in my opinion, one that should be optional.

I'm a bit dissapointed with this patch... I think it tries to fix a lot of things that were not broken on the first place, and by doing it they have introduce a lot of new bugs. I would have prefered they added more content instead.

I was looking forward to play Baldur's Gate, Siege and Baldur's Gate 2 with this new patch, but I think I'll wait for the next patch to see if they correct the new bugs.

I really hope they made an option to revert back to the old behaviour. I want my NPCs to have their "choices" done already so that I adapt to what their skills are instead of min maxing everything.

It's not a bad thing to add to the game, but in my opinion, one that should be optional.

I'm a bit dissapointed with this patch... I think it tries to fix a lot of things that were not broken on the first place, and by doing it they have introduce a lot of new bugs. I would have prefered they added more content instead.

I was looking forward to play Baldur's Gate, Siege and Baldur's Gate 2 with this new patch, but I think I'll wait for the next patch to see if they correct the new bugs.

They'll still have choices made for them. You'll never be able to get Skie or Alora at a level lower than 4, Eldoth or Faldorn at level lower than 3, etc. As for bugs, I've been playing the beta for a month and have barely found any myself, and any I did were hardly game breaking. It's actually quite stable.

You don't need a mod to revert the Level 1 NPC change, you just look at their stats listed on dozens of websites for various levels and you manually take thirty seconds to level them back to the original design. It has no impact on your game play. While I. An level up Coran to have a high set traps skill instead of stealth or s good find traps. Then everyone is happy. It's a painless, pointless thing over which people complain